Before and After
by Grav
Summary: A series of ficlets around the events of HP&tDH. NEW: Divination was nothing like as fun as it used to be.
1. Sixteen Going On Seventeen

AN: I blame sache8 for suggesting getting into Luna Lovegood's head.

Disclaimer: Not mine, though I did just give them ten years of my life.

Rating: Kid friendly, no pairing.

Summary: Luna and Ginny talk before, and after.

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**Before**

The train was quiet this year. Gryffindor was down two prefects and Ginny never did hear who the Head Girl was, but the Slytherins patrolled the corridors alongside the ugliest witch and wizard she'd ever seen, so there really wasn't much desire for moving once the train pulled out of Kings Cross.

Her anger with Harry had abated somewhat in the weeks between the wedding and September first. Her eyes no longer flashed at mentions of him, her brother or Hermione, but she still nursed a grudge. It hadn't been made any better by her mother's tendency to throw her out of the room every time the conversation got interesting, but Ginny wasn't raging any more.

The train rumbled along and the food cart never came. Luna sat across from her, reading the Quibbler as always, and didn't say anything as the hours passed. Finally, as Ginny reached up for her robes, Luna folded the magazine away and looked at her with that odd, direct stare she had.

"He couldn't take you with him, you know."

There were two "he-who-must-not-be-named"s now. Voldemort's name brought the Death Eaters down upon your head and saying you knew Harry made it worse.

"I don't see why not." She grouched, thoughts finally put to words. "I'm more useful than Ron."

"But Ron is seventeen," Luna pointed out.

"Yeah, and when he was sixteen he was a blundering idiot as well."

"They can't say his name and they don't know it." Luna said. "They'll have to do magic all the time. If you were with them, you' be as good as wandless. The Trace would have you all caught."

Ginny's heart stopped. They'd been gone so soon after Harry's birthday...

"I hadn't thought of that."

Luna pulled her robes on over her head and straightened her ear rings. The blue tie tucked around her neck shone in the odd light of Hogsmeade station. Ginny's red and yellow just looked a mess of blood.

"We can do magic in the Castle, you know." Luna said it lightly but her face cast in an expression more serious than Ginny had ever seen it. "I imagine there will be a call for it this year."

"That is true." Ginny smiled and meant it for the first time in a month.

"We should talk to Neville then," Luna said, her hand on the compartment door, "It wouldn't make any sense to do three different things at once."

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**After**

Luna slept in Gryffindor tower that night. Padma and Cho were the only Ravenclaw girls to stay, and their families had swallowed them up almost as soon as the fighting was over, but Xenophilius never came. So Luna slept in Parvati's bed and Ginny slept in Lavender's and if Hermione was conspicuously absent, no one mentioned it.

Ginny stared at the bed for a while before getting into it. Lavender Brown had kissed her brother once, and now she was dead. Ginny's own bed, indeed the room Ginny lived in while at Hogwarts, had been destroyed in the fighting as it shared a party wall with the corridor where Tonks had died. There were dead people everywhere at Hogwarts now.

"You know," said Luna in a voice that made Ginny realize she'd been speaking for some time, "In a way I feel jealous of you."

"Why?" Ginny's voice still croaked when she tried to use it. Irrationally, she wished she'd stayed in the Great Hall. Moving bodies and talking to family members was what most of her family was doing now. She'd spent enough time separated from them.

"Your family was here."

They were. And now Fred was gone forever. And her mother was a killer.

"It's never as heroic as it sounds."

"Oh, I know that now." Luna admitted. "But when your father told you to stay in the Room of Requirement, I wished my father had been there to say the same thing to me. I'm sixteen too, after all."

"I snuck out at the first opportunity."

"And I would have gone with you." Luna looked up at the ceiling where Lavender's collection of crystal balls hung from brightly coloured strings and glimmered in the moonlight. "I just meant it would have been nice if someone had remembered."

Ginny looked across the room. Luna was odd but, as Harry had pointed out, she did have an uncanny connection to the truth at the heart of the matter.

"That's why you came up here with me, wasn't it?" she asked. "My mother told you to go to bed."

"Yes." Luna said. "She fought that horrible Bellatrix for us, and then she hugged me and sent me to bed. It was very nice of her."

"Your father will come back, Luna, and then you can go off on all the research trips with him you like."

"Father never treats me like a child. Today was the first day I really wanted to be one."

"When's your birthday?"

"June."

"You come to the Burrow before that then. My mum will mother you to death."

"I think I'd like that."

The crystal balls swung gently from the ceiling and Ginny felt herself falling to sleep in a dead girl's bed thinking that maybe, after all of this, the world would turn out all right.

"You do know that crystal balls are the preferred mating grounds of Nargles? I suspect that tomorrow morning we shall find ourselves covered with their offspring."

Ginny laughed.

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**finis**

GravityNotIncluded, July 26, 2007


	2. Dance with the Devil in Pale Moonlight

AN: Apparently this has become Harry Potter and the Insights Into Minor Characters (Titled With Bad Allusions to Pop Culture). I'm having fun, at least. Also, I studied at the Joss Whedon School of werewolves. Sorry!

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

Rating: Kid-Friendly, Lupin/Tonks

Summary: Remus Lupin never saw it coming. Neither did Tonks.

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**Before**

He'd been old enough, barely, to remember. He remembered that his mother was worried and that his father was angry, but they both kissed him good-night with smiles on their faces. He remembered the sudden draft over top of his tiny bed as the window slid open and the werewolf moved into his room. After that, the memories faded into screaming.

Before the wolfsbane potion, before the Marauders, it was bad. He remembered every one of his changes, the splitting of bone and the howl of his blood through his veins, as clearly as he remembered the faces of his mother and father. He thought that nothing could ever make him so separate from his body, render him so very much a prisoner in his own flesh.

And then he met Nymphadora Tonks.

It was different, obviously, but it was also startlingly similar. She would look at him and his heart would pound, as though it and all of his insides were about to burst out of his body. It terrified him and he avoided her. He told himself that he was crazy, imaginative, egotistical to think that she was doing it on purpose. Nothing worked.

She became more determined and he became more determined to set her straight, to get her out before she got herself in trouble. He tried logic, age and the Ministry, he tried warnings, even let her watch him change once, and nothing changed her mind. She would smile that smile that drove him crazy and fight back with her own logic.

The night Bill Weasley was attacked, he kissed her in the hallway outside the Hufflepuff common room. She'd been talking, reiterating really, about how Bill and Fleur didn't care so they shouldn't either and he was rapidly losing ground and the only thing he could think to do was kiss her. In hindsight, it had been a very good decision.

It had also been a very bad one. The Ministry tracked them, Bellatrix was a constant threat, they had no real home...and he had never been happier. After she told him about the baby, he worried incessantly again. After Harry had reminded him of what it meant to be a parent, the irony and cruelty of that was not lost on him, he stopped. He let the Order run without him for a while, they understood, and concentrated on his wife, on his love.

Teddy Lupin was born under a full moon, his mother yelling to the darkness and his father chained up in the basement, howling. But when the sun came up and everything returned to normal again, Tonks placed Teddy's in her husband's arms and the baby's hair flashed to blue, a colour Andromeda told them Tonks had turned when she was happy, and all was well.

Battles had still to be fought, of course, and they would fight because it was the right thing to do. Teddy meant that it wasn't easy, but then, it never really was.

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**After**

"I can smell him on you."

The voice that snarled at her through the horrid sounds of the battle was scarcely human. Tonks wiped her brow and set her back to the wall as Moody had shown her all those years ago. She scanned the corridor for the speaker.

"He was so little when I bit him." The speaker continued. She knew who it was now and she gripped her wand tighter in her hands. "His father should never have crossed me."

Tonks sidled up against one of the suits of armour. The spell McGonagall had placed on it had worn off, but it shielded her on one side, made it harder to attack and easier to defend. Moody had taught her that too.

"You smell like him, you know. But you smell like something else too." Tonks held her breath and finally identified the direction the sound was coming from. Down the corridor, Lavender Brown was sending stunning spells to the floor in the hall below her and hadn't noticed that Tonks' battle with Dolohov had come to an end. "Your smell changes, girl. With every emotion you feel."

Tonks let out her breath. She'd been worried he'd smell Teddy but their metamorphic scents must have blended rendering her son undetectable to the child-loving monster she was about to fight.

"I wanted to have another taste of him, you know." Greyback said, stepping into the light. "I wanted to see if he'd improved at all with age."

"He has." Tonks replied, trying to sound like her usual self. That last Death Eater hadn't gone down easily.

"You know what I think?" Greyback drew out the wand he wasn't supposed to carry and leveled it at her. "I think I'll take you instead. And then maybe I'll kip off down the hallway and try out that lovely girl while she's stunning for her friends below."

She glanced down the hall without thinking about it and it almost ended right there. He lunged at her and she threw up a shield just in time. He rammed it and it shimmered purple around him. His face contorted in a howl and he stuck the wand into the shield, shattering it to pieces on the floor.

"Recognize this?" He waved the wand through the air and Tonks bit back a scream.

"You didn't. You said you didn't." Lupin had to be alive. She hadn't found him yet.

"I didn't, but he did." Greyback gestured to the Death Eater, Dolohov she realized, in front of her. "Why else do you think he went down so fast? He was all tired out from killing your husband."

"That is not true."

The curses flew fast and thick then. Tonks was desperately tired, Dolohov had a particularly wicked sense of spellwork and had sapped her of a lot of her energy before she'd finished him, but she did not give up. She ducked a nasty splinching charm and it sent pieces of the suit of armour flying up and down the corridor. She took a step back towards Lavender and aimed another curse at the werewolf.

Snarling and howling with rage, Greyback backed up a few paces as her spell lit his hair on fire. Then he smiled and aimed the splinching curse at the wall of the corridor itself.

The falling rocks got Lavender's attention and Tonks screamed at her to run. As the wall came crashing down, she aimed one last curse, not at the werewolf, she hadn't the strength, but at his stolen wand.

Afterwards, Parvati would find two broken wands near the entrance to Gryffindor tower and Mr. Weasley would find one more broken body.

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**finis**

AN: We're never told if Fenrir was a wizard before he was a werewolf. We are told that Voldemort didn't give him a Dark Mark or accept him. I had him steal Lupin's wand and use it. He's probably not the best spell caster, but he's got all his wolfy traits to back him up.

GravityNotIncluded, July 26, 2007


	3. The Boy Who Stayed

AN: It is now eight minutes after midnight. I really wish my brain would stop having conversations with fictional people!

Disclaimer: Again, not mine.

Rating: Kid friendly, mild Neville/Luna (if you're wearing 'shipper goggles)

Summary: Wars are fought on many fronts, and you have to beat yourself first of all.

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**The Boy Who Stayed**

**Before**

Leaving aside the incident with the dragon during first year and the fallout of the first attempt at forming Dumbledore's army, Neville hadn't spent a lot of time in detention. He'd heard about it from the others, of course, cleaning without magic or cataloguing, those horrible hours Harry had spent answering Professor Lockhart's fan mail, but he realized as Amycus Carrow lined him, Seamus, Michael and a quaking Colin Creevey up in front of a line of snickering Slytherins that this detention was about to break into entirely new territory.

New territory wasn't exactly Neville's forte. He was the first member of his family to be Sorted into Gryffindor (this had caused a great deal of talk over his first Christmas break home. Nearly everyone was certain that the Hat had gone around the bend and made a mistake), but school houses mattered less this year. This year it was about your blood and your family and how far you could trace both of them back. Neville had no issues with blood, they didn't come much truer than the Longbottoms, but this year he was finally starting to come to grips with his family.

The Battle of Hogwarts began on the first of September when Ginny smuggled Luna into the Gryffindor tower. They met in Neville and Seamus' room, trying their best to ignore the three empty beds, and plotted. Dobby kept winking in and out of the room with tea and cookies (the Welcome Banquet had been held under a thunderstruck ceiling in near darkness and the only person who dared to speak above a whisper was Draco Malfoy), stopping every now and then to plump Harry's pillow or re-tie the curtains around Dean's bed claiming that "Master Thomas doesn't like to be closed in".

Their first attack, on September second, resulted in the cancellation of classes for the day due to extreme flooding (Ginny had learned how to re-spread her brothers' swamp, kept faithfully the last year by Professor Flitwick) on the bottom three floors of the castle. Their first detention had been in the Forbidden Forest, wandless, but Neville thought it was an able way to start. This had been Harry's first detention too and he'd certainly gone places since that night.

There had been dozens of attacks since that night and the night that brought him face to face with a maniacal Pansy Parkinson and in that time Neville had become something of a hero. Yes, Harry was the Boy Who Lived, who was right now off doing something to fight the way, but Neville was the Boy Who Stayed and to the children of Hogwarts, he was leader, comforter and friend.

After that Christmas at St. Mungo's, Neville had been much more open about his parents' fate. After the battle in the Ministry, when he'd looked Bellatrix Lestrange in the eye and seen the full extent of her madness, he realized what his parents had faced to protect him. When Pansy looked at him with a mad gleam in her eyes and raised her eyes to cast the spell she'd just been taught, Neville Francis Longbottom closed his eyes and thought about his parents. They had survived. And so would he.

"_Crucio!_"

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**After**

Neville wiped his eyes. The bodies were all laid out in the Great Hall and people were starting to drift away to find a place to rest. Gran was in the infirmary helping Madame Pomfrey and Neville was alone again. The thrill of victory, of slaying the final horcrux, had worn off and Neville was tired and young and hopelessly old all at the same time.

"What's wrong, Neville?" Ginny plopped down beside him on the stairs. They'd been scourgified, but she was sitting in the exact place Lavender Brown had breathed her last and died of werewolf inflicted wounds.

"It's nothing, really" Neville said, trying to compose himself. "It's just silly."

"What's silly?" Luna asked, sitting delicately down on his other side. "Have you been infected with the venom of a Swackling Sabbot? They haunt battlegrounds, you know, and target the survivors."

"No," sighed Neville in a practiced manner, "I don't think it's Swackling Sabbots."

"Come on, Neville." Ginny said with a small smile. "This isn't the night to bear things alone."

"It's Trevor," he admitted finally. "I---I know toads don't live that long and I have had him for years, but…I didn't have time to get him when I ran to the Room of Requirement. I'd hoped someone else in the Tower would see him and take care of him for me."

"I'm sorry, Neville." Ginny said softly. "That was the gift they gave you when you got your letter, wasn't it?"

"Yes, he was."

"I'm sorry he's lost."

"He's not lost." Neville opened his hands and revealed a crushed toad within them. "He must have been in the room that fell on T—that fell during the fight. The wall crushed him too."

"Oh, Neville," said Ginny, tears in her eyes.

"Listen to me," said Neville suddenly, "Blubbering on about my toad when you've lost your…"

He cut off sharply when Luna suddenly threw her arms about his neck and hugged him tightly. Neville froze but Ginny smirked and looked away.

"We'll set him in the Great Hall with the others," Luna said in a determined voice. "We'll bury him tomorrow."

"In the Castle?"

"Why not?" said Ginny. Neville worked an arm free and put it around her shoulder, linking the defenders of Hogwarts.

"We could put him in the Greenhouse," said Luna. "If we bury him in the roots of Twaykle bush, it will discourage the spread of Twayk-rot."

"Where'd you learn that?" Ginny asked, overcome with curiosity in spite of herself.

"Herbology!" Neville said, laughing, "It's part of sixth-year lessons."

"You were out that day," Luna said kindly, "The Carrows were talking to you about that…thing."

"Was that the one with all the dungbombs?" Ginny asked. Neville nodded and the three of them fell to laughing again.

"It was a pretty bad year, wasn't it?" said Neville.

"I don't know," said Ginny, "This year we just faced the end of the world. Next year, we'll all have to write our N.E.W.T.s"

In the Great Hall, Minerva McGonagall and Sir Nicholas kept watch over the fallen of Hogwarts and listened to the laughter of the hope of the future drifting in from the steps.

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**finis**

GravityNotIncluded, July 29, 2007


	4. Marching Orders

AN: I really didn't plan on this. I'm having fun though! This time around it's House Elves.

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

Rating: Kid friendly

Summary: Good Generals come from the most unlikely places.

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**Marching Orders**

**Before**

Harry looked around the kitchen. It was still surprising to see the brightly shining pots and the merrily steaming kettle and hear, ever so softly, Kreacher singing songs that Harry might go so far as to describe as cheerful. Dumbledore, as ever, had been right. When Kreacher was treated fairly and kindly, 12 Grimmauld Place wasn't so bad after all.

It was Harry's day to stay in. Ron and Hermione had left that morning looking for food and news leaving Harry alone to contemplate things. He'd tried cleaning, the old fallback for boredom at Grimmauld Place, but Kreacher had materialized so quickly his head spun and the elf had refused to let him do anything all day that required dusting or sweeping. Harry had retreated to the kitchen when Kreacher began to cook dinner seeking the elf's company. He thought both of them had spent quite enough time alone.

"Would Master like some tea?" Kreacher appeared at his elbow almost before he'd finished sitting down.

"Only if you'll have it with me, Kreacher." Kreacher's shocked look contained more happiness than it would have at this request a few weeks ago.

"Master likes his jokes, sir!" Kreacher poured a cup and headed back towards the stove.

"Is this a good time to talk, Kreacher?" Harry asked politely. "I mean, will I make you burn something?"

"Kreacher never burns things, sir. Kreacher can cook and talk at once."

"Right then." Harry took a sip of his tea, not entirely sure how to proceed.

"Kreacher?"

"Yes Master?"

"I don't like giving you orders. It makes me uncomfortable and Hermione glares."

"Young Miss has some strange ideas, sir."

"She does, but at the same time, I'd rather ask you for something than make you do it."

"Kreacher doesn't mind, sir. Master is nicer than the others, except for Master Regelus." Kreacher was now balancing several plates at once. Harry knew better than to try helping.

"I'm going to give you an order, Kreacher." Harry said firmly.

Kreacher put the plates down and turned towards him, eyes slightly wide with the first hints of fear Harry had seen since the elf had told them the story of the locket.

"Yes, Master. That is Master's right to do."

Harry beckoned Kreacher over, and the elf came and stood on top of the bench. It was their compromise after weeks of negotiating. Kreacher wouldn't sit, but when he was standing on the bench next to Harry they were almost at eye-level.

"Listen to me, Kreacher." Harry said. The elf looked at him. "If something happens to Ron or Hermione or I, if someone tries to come into this house you don't know…if the Death Eaters come, I want you to go to Hogwarts and hide there with Dobby and Winky."

"Why Master?" The elf's eyes glistened. "Why must Kreacher leave his home?"

"What we're doing is very dangerous. The people we're fighting don't like elves at all." Harry winced and screwed up his face: "They would treat you worse than Master Sirius did."

Kreacher bounced off the bench and ran for the oven. He began pulling the pie he'd made for tea out, but was so startled, he dropped it on the floor. He looked back at the hot coils inside the oven.

"Kreacher, no!" Harry shouted before the elf could move closer. "It's all right. We've all dropped things before."

"Kreacher is sorry. Master surprised him."

"I know Kreacher. I just want you to be safe."

Only years of experience with Dobby prepared Harry for Kreacher's teary and heartfelt response to that.

**After**

The fires in the kitchen at Hogwarts had gone out for the first time in the history of the castle. Elf-lights shone dimly around the room as the five hundred house elves of Hogwarts huddled in terror as the building shook around them. Though they were in the basement, the walls still shook under the weight of the spells cast above them, and many of the pots and pans had already fallen from their hooks to the floor.

Near one of the smaller, though still cold, hearths, Winky sobbed into a bottle of Butterbeer that her Master had thrown her out and her Dobby had left her and what were they all to do now? Her hysterics spread slowly through the elves, most of them old enough to remember the last fight with the Dark Lord, until a high pitched wail rang out in concert around the kitchen.

"That is ENOUGH!" Kreacher said, clambering up on a table to make sure they could all see him and setting off a spark of green lights. He'd put on weight since arriving at Hogwarts. He wasn't able to leave the kitchen lest Snape or the Carrows catch sight of him, and the lack of stair-climbing had improved his heath immensely. The Hogwarts elves all thought him a little strange. He and Dobby had been quite close before Dobby disappeared, and the two of them were known for rabble rousing. Still, his meager fireworks surprised them, and all the elves fell silent.

"My Master is up there. He is in danger and Kreacher is safe, because his Master told him to hide at Hogwarts." The elves looked up at him with puzzled faces and Winky hiccoughed loudly in the silence. "Master wanted Kreacher to be safe. Master, a famous wizard, thought of Kreacher even while performing his great deeds."

The elves whispered among themselves that he was mad, mad as Dobby, but they listened to him anyway. A loud crash brough the last bronze kettle crashing to the floor and they all jumped.

"Master doesn't like to ask Kreacher to do things, so Kreacher is going to do this without asking." Kreacher picked up a cleaver in one hand and a skillet in the other. "The bad wizards hates us because we is elves and not men. They think we is animals. They is wrong. We have magic too and we may be small, but we can still reach legs."

Elves all around the kitchen began picking up all manner of knives and cutting tools. Dobby may have been mad, but they all believed his stories about how bad the Malfoys had been to him. None of them wanted Hogwarts under a rule any darker than it already was.

"Defend my Master, defender of Elves!" Kreacher screeched and jumped off the table at a run. He was immediately caught up in a flood of elves, all running and screaming upwards to the castle. And to the fight.

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**finis**

AN: I am sorry about the elf-speak. It kept turning into Gollum when I let it go on ahead of me.

GravityNotIncluded, July 31, 2007


	5. Half a Horse of a Different Colour

AN: I didn't mean for this fic to coincide with International Blog Against Racism Week…but here we are.

Disclaimer: Not mine, though I did just give them ten years of my life.

Rating: Kid friendly, no pairing.

Summary: Divination was nothing like as fun as it used to be.

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**Half a Horse of a Different Colour**

Before

Divination was nothing like as fun as it used to be. Without Harry, whom everyone knew led a charmed life, Professor Trelawney's predictions of doom seemed in poor taste at best and terrifying at worst. Things were made even tenser by the presence of one or both Carrows in nearly every class. They, at least, seemed to believe that Trelawney was a genuine seer and they hung on her every word; whenever she wasn't too terrified to speak, of course.

Firenze's half of the classes were both better and worse. The Carrows didn't come into his forest glen class room, though they would spit upon the threshold every time the passed it, but the centaur's shoulders stooped with despair and his words were ever more disheartening than Trelawney's. The centaur didn't see their fates in tea leaves, easily rinsed from the cup and poured down the drain, he saw it in the sky and without Hermione Granger around to disparage the entire discipline, they all had trouble shaking off their feelings of impending doom.

Parvati and the other Gryffindors grew to dread astronomy classes. As they charted the movements of the stars, they saw Firenze's predictions play out across the heavens. Sometimes, she was tempted to ask him if Harry had a star and if that star had any hope, but something in his face, in the way he spoke about human abilities to see the future, made her courage fail. She and Lavender consulted every book they could get their hands on, grateful for once that Hermione had put up charts of the library on the wall in their dormitory instead of posters of famous wizards, but found nothing encouraging.

After Christmas, when Luna disappeared and Dumbledore's Army began to get nervous, Divination changed again. Professor Trelawney refused to look at Lavender, and all of Lavender's readings began to include the Wolf. Rumour had it that in the sixth year classes Trelawney had taken to breaking down every time she looked at Colin Creevey. Firenze, who usually maligned all of Trelawney's predictions, said nothing which only served to make everyone more nervous. By Easter, most of the class had given up any hope of passing the N.E.W.T.

Spring brought no light to Hogwarts that year. With Ginny Weasley's disappearance, Dumbledore's Army all but went to ground. Member after member was forced to flee to the Room of Requirement and the room that had once been their gift became their prison. But they practiced and they studied and they forced all doubts to the back of their minds. If Harry had died even a quarter of the times Trelawney had predicted, they might have worried more, but Harry lived and they fought because it was the right thing to do.

When Parvati stepped out into the corridor to join the battle of Hogwarts with her sister on her left and her best friend on her right, she heard a wolf howl in the distance and, for the first time, she was truly afraid.

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**After**

With tears pouring from her eyes, Parvati cradled Lavender's broken body in her lap. She'd been crying for hours already, having been the one to find Tonks' broken wand and bring it to the Auror's mother and orphaned baby in the Great Hall, but this was different. This was _Lavender_.

She heard a soft noise and looked up. Her eyes locked for a moment with those of George Weasley and for a moment she thought she might vomit. Her twin lived. How dare she cry over her best friend when her twin lived. She wiped her face with bloody hands and tried to think of something, anything, to say, but George just put his hand on her shoulder for a moment before continuing outside.

Her tears fell with renewed strength after that. Everywhere, it seemed, were broken families and hers was intact. She wondered what she would be thinking if Padma lay here instead and, as always when she thought of her twin, she looked around to find her. Padma was in a group of other Ravenclaw survivors across the entrance hall as they circled the body of Michael Corner. As they lifted him to bear him to the Great Hall, Padma found her sister's gaze and smiled a sad smile at her.

It had always been like that between them. They were connected by thought, but not bonded as closely as other twins they knew. Padma had never been her best friend, and neither twin had been particularly surprised to end up in a different house from the other. They didn't complete each other's sentences and they didn't think with one mind, but they were sisters and when they had finished grieving separately, they would grieve together.

The sound of hooves on the marble floor surprised her and she looked up into the sad eyes of Firenze. She could not bear his gaze for long, so she dropped her eyes back to Lavender's still face.

"She has a place in the Great Hall, Parvati," the centaur said softly. Parvati looked up again with some surprise. Firenze almost never used their names when he talked to them. "Let me help you."

He reached down and picked up Lavender's body. For the first time, Parvati noticed the extent of his wounds. His naked torso was covered with welts and most of his tail was gone, leaving only a few singed remnants. She made a sympathetic sound.

"I shall heal." He said simply, understanding her before she spoke. "We shall all heal."

He carried Lavender into the Great Hall and set her amongst the Gryffindor dead. Parvati heard a noise of disgust behind her and turned to see three more centaurs, strong and deadly, standing in one of the corridors.

"Still he consents to bear them." Parvati couldn't make out which of them had spoken, but the venom in his voice was unmistakable. She took a deep breath and crossed the Great Hall towards them.

"Excuse me?" she said tremulously, standing outside of what she hoped was their kicking range.

"What do you want, human?" the same centaur spoke again and this time his voice was even more venomous.

"I – " Parvati faltered and one of the others laughed. She took a deep breath. "I wanted to thank you. For coming. We...needed you."

"The Dark Lord's purpose serves us not." replied the centaur who had laughed. "As much as we don't like you, his rule would be worse."

"I know that." Parvati said. "I just...wanted to thank you."

"I suppose you think it's a step towards reconciliation?"

"I don't know," Parvati admitted. "I don't know if we will ever reconcile. Although my friend Hermione probably won't die until we do."

The centaur laughed again, but this time his tone was a little different.

"I was wondering if you would let Firenze go home." Parvati said suddenly, surprising herself. "He misses the Forest. And he misses all of you."

"He would be your servant." The dark haired centaur sneered.

"He was my teacher." Parvati said softly. "I didn't care that he wasn't human. If my friend had lived, she wouldn't quite be human anymore, but I would rather that then have her dead. I don't care who carries a wand, so long as they don't run around killing with them."

The centaurs seemed taken aback by her admission and exchanged a glance.

"We will speak of it with the herd," the leader said finally.

"Thank you," said Parvati. "And thank you again for coming."

The centaur inclined his head, much to the surprise of his companions, and the three of them left the Entrance Hall. Parvati turned around and saw Professor McGonagall standing on the steps. Her wand was out and the blood stain Lavender left was gone, scourgified off the stair, but never out of Parvati's mind. McGonagall caught her gaze and smiled broadly at her, proud of her House. Parvati smiled back, the spirit of Gryffindor strong in her mind, and crossed the hall to her sister's embrace.

------

**finis**

AN: I've always found it really cool that the Patils got sorted into different houses. To me, it means that they aren't all that close (for twins), and I wonder what makes Parvati a Gryffindor and her sister a Ravenclaw. I was quite miffed that the movie sorted them both into the same House, because what makes them cool is that they aren't Weasleys.

GravityNotIncluded, August 7, 2007


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